Praxians
The people from Praxis very much fit the description of Earth's mythical Amazons. Beautiful, athletic, human looking women who tower nearly seven feet tall and who are skilled in combat from an early age. One must wonder if some distant ancestor of the Praxian women could have traveled through space to visit Earth during its prehistoric days, and hence created the Amazonian myth . This is a possibility because the Praxians were once a great civilization, with a super science that easily equaled the Robotech Masters'. A race that had captured gravity and dared to toy with the very building blocks of man. It is clear that they had mastered genetics, cloning and the llkes. The perfect women of Praxis and a handful of artifacts attest to thi s. But then something went seriously awry. Perhaps war, or more likely a genetic mishap or super virus created in a genetics lab. Nobody knows. ALL records of that time are gone and even the myths and legends offer no hint to the cataclysm that destroyed a civilization. Now, no one knows why many eons later, there are only women on Praxis. The women themselves are genetic anomalies, the obvious result of genetic manipulation. Physically, they are perfect in every way, including the capability for child birth. However, they possess dominant genes, Doctor Lang called them super genes, that tend to crush all other genes with different traits, including the male gender. Consequently, even though a human or Zentraedi male can mate with them and produce natural offspring, the child would almost certainly be female . Only one in every 1000 children born from natural parent couplings will be male. On Praxis, males have been absent for thousands of years. The women were able to continue to propagate their race by artificial insemination. The sacred "Place of Life" is apparently one of the few remnant of the previous super civilization and it continues to function with automated bliss all these centuries later. It was probably some sort of genetics complex designed to keep the race pure and perfect. Presumably, it never had the capabillty for producing male infants or that supply was contaminated or destroyed. It is little wonder then, that the Praxians are very taken by human males. A mixed male and female environment is a new and exciting experience for the Praxians. However, although the women warriors are discovering their sexuality, they also find men to be rather alien. The Praxians are bold, cocky, and selfreliant. They observe none of the formalities of Earth's ("alien") customs and are the furthest thing from prissy, helpless handmaidens. They are extremely aggressive, outspoken and arrogant. Like the Amazons of myth, they strive to be the very best in everything, especially the arts of combat. This is extremely disturbing to the Zentraedi, especially the male Zentraedi, who seem to feel threatened by these powerful warrior women. The two races seem to be eternally competing with each other and constantly impugn the abilities of the other. Sarcasm, jokes, barbs and intolerance fly when these two get together. Since both partake in these affronts as much as the other, one can only believe it is the macho way two rival warrior races regard each other. To have one acknowledge the other in a more pleasant way might be construed as weakness and/or recognizing them as being superior. Or at least that's Lisa Hayes's theory. The Praxians wear very little clothing or battle armor, usually a helmet, some chest protection, arm bands and leggings. A shield, dagger, gauntlets, naginata style pole arm and/or crossbow completes the traditional warrior garb. The Praxian society of today is a low technology, hunting/warrior civilization not unlike Earth's ancient Greeks or Romans. The planet's hospitable subtropical environment greatly reduced the need to protect oneself from the environment. Buildings are a mix of ancient ruins, open buildings and monuments to feats of physical excellence and war. Warriors, in the ancient sense of hand to hand combat, the Praxians admire the power of mecha and the marvels of high technology, but still prefer to engage the enemy face to face and hand to hand. Consequently, they have remained resistant to the use of mecha, energy weapons, and assault vehicles. Much of this is a sense of heritage and values passed down for hundreds of generations. However, the Praxians are not techno-phobic and have expressed great excitement over the VR-041 Saber Cyclone (specifically in batdoid mode with CADS-I) and love to use the mecha Pegasus developed by Doctor Lang especially for them. The Praxians have also adopted the Wolverine assault rifle as the high-tech weapon of choice. Cobalt grenades and cobalt limpet mines have also won a place in their hearts. The REF has found that the Praxians make superb scouts and it uses them for reconnaissance, spying, sabotage, infiltration and other covert operations. They can be especially effective against the invid when infiltrating a Hive base. Their skill at stealth and resistance to using protoculture powered devices makes them almost invisible to the invid, enabling them to carry out sabotage and lead guerilla combat-style assaults. Copyright - Palladium Books